The problem is that Heroics are incredibly easy these days, no real challene and far from the experience it was back in earlier expansions.

If you still want to stick there, there is really no need to spend VP for gear, so you can just go ahead and exchange it against trade goods (there is a vendor somwhere to my knowledge). If you want to put it into gear to make heroics even more boring, I would recommend buying DPS gear which is available from all vendors. No need to upgrade trinkets (some good DPS ones are available in heroics, e.g Scholo), you will probably have the excellent chest from Golden Lotus, then the rings and everything else from where you just raised to revered. As I said, it really doesnt matter.

If you are looking at an end game of heroics have you considered challenge modes? Gear scales to 463 so could still be worth VP spent on "tanking" gear rather than trade goods. Should be a nice challenge compared with ten mans but also a patience sink so may not be for you.

Extermi wrote:The problem is that Heroics are incredibly easy these days, no real challene and far from the experience it was back in earlier expansions.

If you still want to stick there, there is really no need to spend VP for gear, so you can just go ahead and exchange it against trade goods (there is a vendor somwhere to my knowledge). If you want to put it into gear to make heroics even more boring, I would recommend buying DPS gear which is available from all vendors. No need to upgrade trinkets (some good DPS ones are available in heroics, e.g Scholo), you will probably have the excellent chest from Golden Lotus, then the rings and everything else from where you just raised to revered. As I said, it really doesnt matter.

you can tank heroics in green gear fineit will be a little tougher on your healer obviously, but as long as you know wtf you are doing, you are fine450 gear is more than enough, and as you get more and more gear, it will just be easier and easier

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

With VP gear, it is quite possible to have gear progression without proper raiding. Yes, you don't "need" it for 5 mans, but acquiring gear is a hook to motivate you to keep playing. There have been long periods of WoW where I can't raid - I fear I am at the start of another one now - but I can keep "progressing" thanks to VPs (and crafted gear and PVP gear).

I would suggest that you think of doing Sha of Anger each week and perhaps even LFR.

Sha is a very quick, low stress and potentially high return fight for a tank. It can drop tier 14 hands and legs (I've got both from it) which are the best stuff you can get without raiding. It also drops PvP items which are often excellent for tanking. (Bear in mind that we value hit, expertise, haste and mastery now - it's only crit we don't care about and even then some of that can be reforged.)

LFR by contrast, takes longer, can be stressful to tank and has less good drops. But, with our new gearing priorities, you can run as dps and potentially get a lot of items that are good for tanking. Also, you can respec to tank before using your bonus coin and have a chance to get tank loot even if you queued as tank. So far, I only run LFR as dps (the queues are horrible for tanks) and as dps - as Worldie once advised me - running LFR is one of the most relaxing things you can do in WoW. Perhaps most importantly of all, LFR is possibly the most interesting way of grinding out your 1k VPs per week - next week there will be 5 LFRs open, each giving you 90 VPs. That's almost half your cap gone before you have to think about dailies and/or daily heroics/scenarios.

Note that if you do run Sha each week, you might want to hold off spending VPs on hands and legs. If you do LFR HoF, you might also want to hold off on the chest.

On your specific question of what to spend your VPs on first, you could use AskMrRobot. Choose a gearing scheme - for example, theck recommends control/haste - and it will give a score for each item. Clicking one of your equipped items, you will see scores for all available upgrades. You can change the options to exclude raid gear. If you want to be thorough, you can see what has the highest score per VP.

A lot of raiders pick VPs with a view to what does - or more particularly does not - drop in raids. However, for a non-raider this is less important. You can just get what gives you the biggest bang for your buck (my caution about tier gear excepted).

Last edited by econ21 on Thu Nov 15, 2012 8:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oxboy555 wrote:Are you saying I can tank Heroics fine with the i450 Contender gear?

Heroics are supposedly tuned to 440 item level, so you would be over 2/3 of a tier above the target level of gear. I actually think they are tuned for lower than that, which would be even better for you, but that is just my feeling. The only heroics I would say that would be ones to watch for lots of damage are Shadow Pan Monastery and Scarlett Halls (or whichever has the graveyard/chapel). 440 to 450 ilvl should still be fine for those, but there are some decent damage dealers in both instances (I want to say Fanatics in Scarlett Halls and Corrupted Sha/Regnerating Sha packs in SPM...been a while since I was at the 440 ilvl now).

The majority of the damage in Heroics can be completely avoided by the tank as long as you just pay attention to the abilities being used. There is almost always some trick to avoid or mitigate the damage in heroics. And don't be afraid to use some CC if you are really worried.

econ21 wrote:With VP gear, it is quite possible to have gear progression without proper raiding. Yes, you don't "need" it for 5 mans, but acquiring gear is a hook to motivate you to keep playing. There have been long periods of WoW where I can't raid - I fear I am at the start of another one now - but I can keep "progressing" thanks to VPs (and crafted gear and PVP gear).

I would suggest that you think of doing Sha of Anger each week and perhaps even LFR.

Sha is a very quick, low stress and potentially high return fight for a tank. It can drop tier 14 hands and legs (I've got both from it) which are the best stuff you can get without raiding. It also drops PvP items which are often excellent for tanking. (Bear in mind that we value hit, expertise, haste and mastery now - it's only crit we don't care about and even then some of that can be reforged.)

LFR by contrast, takes longer, can be stressful to tank and has less good drops. But, with our new gearing priorities, you can run as dps and potentially get a lot of items that are good for tanking. Also, you can respec to tank before using your bonus coin and have a chance to get tank loot even if you queued as tank. So far, I only run LFR as dps (the queues are horrible for tanks) and as dps - as Worldie once advised me - running LFR is one of the most relaxing things you can do in WoW. Perhaps most importantly of all, LFR is possibly the most interesting way of grinding out your 1k VPs per week - next week there will be 5 LFRs open, each giving you 90 VPs. That's almost half your cap gone before you have to think about dailies and/or daily heroics/scenarios.

Note that if you do run Sha each week, you might want to hold off spending VPs on hands and legs. If you do LFR HoF, you might also want to hold off on the chest.

On your specific question of what to spend your VPs on first, you could use AskMrRobot. Choose a gearing scheme - for example, theck recommends control/haste - and it will give a score for each item. Clicking one of your equipped items, you will see scores for all available upgrades. You can change the options to exclude raid gear. If you want to be thorough, you can see what has the highest score per VP.

A lot of raiders pick VPs with a view to what does - or more particularly does not - drop in raids. However, for a non-raider this is less important. You can just get what gives you the biggest bang for your buck (my caution about tier gear excepted).

well i did my first ones as dps when i was 89as a tank....all depends on the healers and your skill as a tanko jave a feeling though as long as you know how to hit cds and arent the main tank (just picking up adds) you will do fine

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

Oxboy555 wrote:How important is it to be all in 463+ before attempting Sha?

Not important at all. Sometimes level 89s are invited to the PUGs. It's a 40 man raid and the boss is tuned to be easily downable, so at least on my realm, no one requires a certain ilevel before you are invited to the raid. I took my newly levelled undergeared warrior tank (ilevel about 440ish) to it and stayed alive - I wasn't the main tank but I did play a useful job with the adds. When the raid first came out and people were undergeared, people would just run back to the fight after dying. Nowadays, kills seem pretty quick and smooth. If you are not well geared as a tank, you might let another tank make the pull and hopefully keep the boss's aggro. You could either also tank the boss in case something goes wrong with the main tank or you could help with all the adds and mind controlled players.

I'd recommend running Sha as tank - you are supposed to get tier gear for your spec not class - and running LFR as dps until you feel confident.